Friday, August 10, 2012

Some of the Worst Killers (part 2)

Kendall Francois

Location: New York, U.S.

Date: 1996 – 1998
Crime: Currently serving life in prison for the murder of eight prostitutes in Poughkeepsie, New York.
Biography: Kendall Francois was born in Poughkeepsie, New York and
never really left the house he grew up in with his parents and sister.
He was a big man and played on the high school football team. After
graduation, he joined the Army and served until 1993. He attended
college classes on and off after the military and never held down a job
for long. The bizarre twist in this case is that Francois committed
each of his murders in the same house that he shared with his family.
The first murder occurred in October 1996 and after strangling the
young prostitute to death, he left her body to rot in the attic. Two
months later, he killed another prostitute and placed her body
alongside the first. After the fourth missing persons case involving a
prostitute, the F.B. I. was called in to assist local authorities. In
early 1997, police set up surveillance on Kendall Francois after
several local prostitutes who were interviewed during the
investigation, complained about him being rough during sex. Nothing
came of the surveillance which included a wiretapped conversation
between a prostitute and Francois, causing the police to mov on from
Francois. Two months later, he struck again and over the next year had
murdered eight women and stored their bodies in the attic. Finally,
on September 1, 1988, Francois was strangling an abducted prostitute
when she broke free and escaped his home. She led police back to the
address and the police had finally caught their killer. To this day,
police cannot explain how his sister and parents could continue to live
in that house without knowing what he was up to and also put up with
the overwhelming stench of decomposing bodies which permeated the
entire house.

Luis Alfredo Garavito Cubillos

Location: Columbia

Date: 1992 – 1999
Crime: In 1999, ‘La Bestia’(The Beast) admitted to the rape and
murder of 140 boys between the ages of 6 and 16. He has been convicted
of 138 additional murders is still under investigation for at least 34
more victims based on evidence and skeletal remains found throughout
Columbia.
Biography: Born on January 25th, 1957 , La Bestia is the oldest of
seven brothers. His childhood was ruled by his father, subsequently
described as both physically and emotionally abusive. Further, during
his trial, Garavito described being sexually abused when he was a young
boy, but didn’t name the perpetrator.
Further details of his early life are sketchy at best, however, the
details surrounding his maniacal killings is frightening. He lured
children to trust and accompany him through offers of money for odd
jobs, candy or drugs. All of the children were tied up, viciously
tortured, raped and were eventually killed by having their throat
slashed and many were decapitated completely. Garavito has accurately
directed police investigators to the graves of more than 170 victims,
encompassing large parts of Columbia. Investigators believe that
Garavito is responsible for more than 300 deaths during the years prior
to his capture.

Matti Juhani Saari

Location: Kauhajoki, Finland

Date: September 23, 2008
Crime: The second spree killing in Finland in less than a year was
committed by Saari, who shot and killed 10 people with a Walther P22
semi-automatic pistol before shooting himself in the head. The massacre
took place on the campus of a school where he was in his second year
of a Baccalaureate degree program.
Biography: Matti Saari was 22 years old at the time of the killing
spree. Little information exists about his early life, but he had been
known to be a troubled young man for several years. He claimed to
have been bullied a great deal in his younger years but as he grew to
adulthood, he was the one getting in trouble for being a bully and
exhibiting violent tendencies. In 2006, Saari was thrown out of the
Finnish army for opening fire during a routine training exercise. He
left behind two notes in the school dormitory which revealed that he
had been planning this massacre for 6 years. He wrote; ‘I hate the
human race and the solution is a Walther 22.’ Like Pekka-Eric Auvinen
before him, Saari posted videos of himself on You Tube firing weapons,
however, he never foretold what he was about to do.

The killer Matti Juhani Saari shooting a gun for his YouTube video

Michael Bruce Ross

Location: United States

Date: 1981 – 1984
Crime: Known as ‘The Roadside Strangler’, Ross was convicted and
sentenced to death for four murders he committed. He eventually
confessed to eight murders during the time frame of his killings.
Biography: Born on a chicken farm in Putnam, Connecticut on July
26, 1959, Ross was the oldest of four children. His young life was
horrific as his mentally unstable mother beat all four of her children
without reprieve. It has been said that a young Ross was sexually
abused by a teenage uncle who later committed suicide. In spite of his
troubled youth, Ross excelled in school and eventually studied at
Cornell University. As a sophomore at Cornell, Ross found trouble when
he began stalking female students on campus. As a senior, he
committed his first rape and murder. Over the next three years, he
would rape and murder eight women. Called ‘The Roadside Strangler’
because of where the bodies of his victims were dumped, Ross was
finally caught when after the last murder, witnesses claimed that the
victim was last seen getting into a blue Toyota. Police investigators
eventually got to Ross, who owned a car matching that description, and
during the interrogation, Ross kept dropping subtle hints that he was
their man. Once in custody he confessed to all eight murders. He was
put to death by lethal injection on May 13, 2005.

Michael McLendon

Location: Geneva County, Alabama

Date: March 10, 2009
Crime: In a span of forty seven minutes, spanning two communities
in Alabama, this twenty six year old gunman killed ten people and
wounded six others. The dead included members of the killers family as
well as the burning of his mothers home. Armed with an SKS rifle,
Bushmaster AR-15 rifle and .38 caliber handgun, he shot and killed
himself as police moved in.
Biography: This violent spree began with the calculated killing of
several members of Michael McLendon’s family. He first shot his mother
and set fire to her house before driving to a nearby town where he
killed 5 more members of his family and several neighbors. Then the
spree became random as he drove down the street shooting at anyone he
saw. Officials believe this event was precipitated by legal
disagreements McLendon had with other family members after his parents
divorced. Up until this point, McLendon had lived a very non-descript
life. He was described as shy and quiet, but no one that knew him
could say that they felt he was capable of this type of action. The
week prior to the incident, McLendon abruptly quit his job as a team
leader at a food manufacturing and distribution plant in a nearby town.
Police ruled out anything job-related as a motive in the attack and
to this day have no clear motive for the spree. Mclendon left a note
admitting to the killing of his mother and that he ultimately planned
to commit suicide.

Michael Robert Ryan

Location: Hungerford, Berkshire, England

Date: August 19, 1987
Crime: Before turning a gun on himself, Ryan used two assault
rifles and a Berretta handgun to claim sixteen lives while wounding
fifteen others. His own mother was one of the victims.
Biography: Known as the Hungerford Massacre, one of the worst
criminal atrocities in British history was conducted by a 27 year-old
gunman, named Michael Robert Ryan. Unemployed at the time of the
killings, Ryan was born at a hospital just outside of Hungerford on May
18, 1960. It was said that Ryan lived with his doting mother and had
what was described by the British Press as an ‘obsessive fascination’
with guns and the Rambo movies. Between 1978 and April 1987, Ryan
applied for and was issued numerous certificates to own various types
of firearms. He lived his young adult life as a loner. Never seen
with friends, he drank alone at the local pub and although he spent a
lot of time at the firing range, never fraternized with anyone there
either. It is believed that the spree began with Ryan shooting his
mother at point blank range, then he drove to a local park and
attempted to rape a young mother of two. She apparently tried to
escape and was promptly shot 13 times in the back, yet the children
were spared. He then began driving around and shooting at people in
various locations around Berkshire, before taking refuge in a local
college. After a five hour stand-off and surrounded by police, Ryan
threatened them with a hand grenade and shouted, ‘I wish I had stayed
in bed’. He then shot himself and died.

Mutsuo Toi

Location: Tsuyama, Japan

Date: May 20, 1938
Crime: Using a Browning shotgun, a Japanese Sword, and an axe,
killed 30 people including the beheading of his own grandmother in
1938. Three other villagers were seriously wounded.
Biography: Mutsuo Toi was born, March 5, 1917 in Okayama, Japan.
After his parents died of Tuberculosis, while he was still a baby, Toi
and his sister were raised by his grandmother. He lived a seemingly
normal childhood until the age of 17, around which time his sister
married. This event, apparently triggered young Toi to become socially
reclusive. In 1936, he began crawling into the beds of young women, in
the middle of the night, seeking sexual intercourse. This was a
traditional Japanese activity called ‘night-crawling’, or Yobai. In May
of 1937, Toi was diagnosed with Tuberculosis and soon found his sexual
advances being rejected by the young women in the village. In the
deep night, on May 20, 1938, he exacted his revenge by cutting the
power line to the entire village, beheading his grandmother and
savagely killing 29 neighbors. At sunrise, Toi shot himself in the
chest and died.

Orville Lynn Majors

Location: United States

Date: 1993 – 1995
Crime: Utilized his position as an LPN in the care of the elderly
to kill as many as 130 patients via injection of potassium chloride.
He was only tried and convicted of six of those murders and is serving
360 years in an Indiana state prison.
Biography: Orville Lynn Majors was born on April 24, 1961 in
Clinton, Indiana. His father was a coal miner from Greenville,
Kentucky and his penchant for elderly care was solidified when as a
youngster, he cared for his elderly grandmother. After high school, he
studied nursing at a medical training school in Nashville,
subsequently finding work at Vermillion County Hospital. He left VCH
for a short time but came back for good in 1993. A study of his
performance evaluations tells the tale of a caring and compassionate
employee. However, late in 1993, suspicions arose when it was
determined that an inordinate number of Major’s patients seemed to be
dying. Over the next year, it was found that a VCH patient died every
23 hours that Major’s was on duty, as opposed to one every 552 hours
when he was not on duty. In 1995, Majors was suspended for giving
unauthorized injections to his patients, although there was insufficient
evidence that he was criminally harming anyone in his care. Finally,
in 1997 a nephew of Major’s came forward to claim that Majors had
boasted of killing patients. Police searched his vehicle and garage and
found potassium chloride and other medical supplies used for
injections. In December, 1997, Majors was arrested and charged in the
deaths of six former patients for which he was convicted and sentenced.
Indiana police spent almost 90,000 hours investigating this crime and
exhumed the bodies of at least 13 former patients, all of which have
been found to have died suspiciously. This investigation ultimately
supports the belief that Major’s could be responsible for more than 130
patients who died while in his care at VCH.

Patrick Henry Sherrill

Location: Edmond, Oklahoma

Date: August 20, 1986
Crime: After being reprimanded the previous day by two supervisors,
walked into the U.S. Post Office where he worked armed with two .45
caliber handguns and opened fire. Before turning the guns on himself,
he killed fourteen Postal Service employees and wounded six others.
This killing event inspired the popular phrase ‘going postal’.
Biography: Patrick Henry Sherrill was a 44-year old, ex-Marine
sharpshooter who was described as being very quiet, and very much a
loner. He lived with his mother, until her death in 1978 and up until
the killings, still lived in that same house. Never married and with
no known friends, Sherrill had difficulty keeping jobs and was tagged
with the nickname, ‘Crazy Pat’ by neighborhood kids. His neighbors
hated him and accused him of being a Peeping Tom. He spent sixteen
months, prior to the event, working as a temporary letter carrier. He
was constantly being reprimanded for mis-delivering mail and taking too
long to complete his route. The day before the killings, he asked a
fellow worker if she was scheduled to work the next day. When she
replied in the affirmative, Sherrill told her, ‘You should probably
call in sick’. At 7 a.m. the following day, he walked into the post
office, wearing his blue uniform and carrying his weapons in his postal
bag. Without uttering a word, he commenced the assault, first killing
one of the supervisors who reprimanded him, then, began chasing the
fleeing workers around and shooting them in the back and head. After
20 minutes, with police surrounding the building, he pumped a shot into
his own head and died.

Pedro Alonso Lopez

Location: South America

Date: 1977 – 1980
Crime: Known as ‘The Monster of the Andes’, accused of killing more
than 300 girls across South America. In 1983 was convicted of
murdering 110 girls in Ecuador, but later confessed to killing more
than 240 others in Peru and Columbia. Incredibly, he was released from
Ecuadorian prison after only 14 years and extradited back to Columbia.
There he served just 3 years in a Columbian mental institution before
being released and ‘The Monster’ has since disappeared.
Biography: Pedro Alonzo Lopez was one of thirteen children, born to
a prostitute in Santa Isabel, Columbia. Early indications of his
future occurred when he was eight years old and he was caught fondling
his younger sister. He was kicked out of the family home, only to be
taken in by a pedophile who repeatedly abused and sodomized him.
Eventually he escaped that existence, but by the age of eighteen he was
in trouble with the law, jailed and suffered a gang rape at the hands
of a group of hardened criminals in the prison. Lopez claims to have
exacted revenge by killing three of the rapists while he was
incarcerated. Shortly after his release from prison, he began preying
on young girls in Peru. It is believed that within a year he had
claimed over 100 victims. It was then that he was caught by a native
tribe that demanded his execution. He was saved by an American
missionary who persuaded them to release him into the custody of the
state police. Wanting nothing to do with him, the Peruvian police
released him under the condition that he return to Columbia, however,
Lopez first went to Ecuador to continue his killing spree. Lopez was
eventually arrested, convicted and ultimately released and his
whereabouts to this day are unknown.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen

Location: Jokela, Finland

Date: November 7, 2007
Crime: Entered his school with a .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol
and killed eight people and wounding twelve others before shooting
himself in the head. Prior to the spree, he had posted a video on You
Tube foretelling his massacre.
Biography: Auvinen a student at Jokela High school, was 18-years
old at the time of the attack and lived with his parents and younger
brother. Reports indicate that Auvinen was constantly bullied in
school, where he excelled academically. He had been on antidepressant
medication for the year prior to the incident, which may have
contributed to his suicidal state of mind due to the medications’
side-effects in young adults. The police investigation included an
examination of Auvinen’s You Tube account which, along with his
homemade video announcing his plans for the massacre, contained video’s
glorifying other shootings and violent events, most notably the
Columbine massacre.

Pekka-Eric Auvinen - as he appeared on YouTube 1 hour before the killings

Peter Manuel

Location: Birkenshaw, Scotland

Date: 1956 – 1958
Crime: Manuel, nicknamed the ‘Beast of Birkenshaw’ , confessed to
killing 18 people but was hanged for being convicted of eight murders
in the mid to late 50′s.
Biography: Manuel was born in March 1927 in New York to Scottish
immigrants. When he was just five, the family packed up and moved to
Coventry, England where he spent his youth getting into various sorts
of trouble. He was jailed at the age of 16 for sexually assaulting a
young woman. Over the next decade, he was arrested and jailed multiple
times for rape. Finally, in 1953, he moved to Glasgow to rejoin his
family that had moved away years earlier. In 1956, he murdered a
seventeen year old girl with an iron rod and dumped her body on a local
golf course. As a previous sex-offender, he was questioned by police
and released. Two months later, he killed again, shooting three women
at close range in their home. Police suspected Manuel in the killing,
but once again, he was released after questioning. Manuel went back to
jail for a burglary and was released in December 1957. Within days he
had killed again, this time randomly shooting a taxi driver, a young
student and an entire family, including a ten year old child.
Authorities discovered that Manuel took up residence in the dead
families house for more than a week after the crime. Ultimately, the
murder of that family would lead to his arrest. In January, 1958, he
was passing banknotes that he had stolen from the home and aroused the
suspicion of a local bartender. Police subsequently traced the notes
back to the dead family and arrested Manuel. Once in custody, he began
confessing to additional murders and even led the police to the burial
site of one of his victims.

Richard Wade Farley

Category: Mass Murder

Location: United States
Date: February 16, 1988
Crime: Stalked a female co-worker for four years before shooting
and killing seven people at his place of employment and wounding four
others, including the woman he had stalked. He is currently on death
row in San Quentin prison.
Biography: Born in Texas, in 1948, Richard Wade Farley was the
eldest of six children. His father, a mechanic in the Air Force, moved
the family frequently with each of his assignments, finally settling
in the small town of Petaluma, California. As a child, Rich was
described as unremarkable and isolated and his family was not
considered close-knit. Throughout his school years, he was not known to
have had any close friends to speak of and had no history of the
extreme behavior that manifested itself later on in his life. He
dropped out of community college and joined the Navy in 1967, where he
earned commendations for conduct and marksmanship. He also learned
computer technology which led him to Silicon Valley upon his release
from military life. His latent, psychosis was triggered upon meeting
Laura Black, a 22-year old engineer at the company where they both
worked. Farley was instantly smitten and over the next several years,
pursued her obsessively. He wrote over 200 letters to her, left her
gifts and packages several times a week and was ultimately sent for
counseling after she complained. His obsession took a turn after that
as he began to threaten her. Ms. Black was forced to move several times
during the four years of the stalking. In May 1986, Farley was
terminated for his work performance and also his unrelenting pursuit of
Black. This just gave him the opportunity to pursue her full-time. He
was soon under economic hardship due to the loss of his income,
however, his pursuit never wavered. In late 1987 and early 1988, his
letters to Black became overtly threatening forcing her to seek a
restraining order against him on February 2, 1988. The trial to
execute the restraining order was scheduled for February 17th. On the
day before the trial, Farley gathered up his collection of weapons, and
armed himself with a ammunition vest and drove to his former place of
employment. He claimed that his intent was to dissuade Black from
executing the restraining by threatening to kill himself in front of
her. Instead, he sat outside the office building all day and at 3:00
p.m. shot his way through a side door and began gunning down anyone in
his way as he walked toward Ms. Black’s office, shooting her through the
closed door. He then held off the SWAT team for 5 hours before
surrendering. Ms. Black survived the attack, but remains permanently
disabled. On January 17, 1992, Farley was sentenced to die in the gas
chamber and is currently awaiting his required appeals and eventual
execution.

Robert Steinhauser

Location: Efurt, Germany

Date: April 26, 2002
Crime: Wearing a ninja outfit and armed with 9mm Glock 17 pistol
and pump-action shotgun, charged into his former school and killed
thirteen faculty members, two students and one police officer, while
wounding seven others. He then committed suicide.
Biography: Robert Steinhauser was a 19-year old student who had
recently been expelled from Gutenberg Gymnasium, in Efurt, Germany. At
approximately, 11:05 a.m. he began moving from classroom to classroom,
dressed in a Ninja outfit. He paused in the doorway of each classroom
he passed and shot the teacher, ignoring the students in the room.
His anger with the school was precipitated by his failing to graduate
the prior year. He was eventually expelled because he had not been
attending class and had forged absentee excuses. Authorities indicate
that he was an expert marksman and was carrying over 1,000 rounds of
ammunition. The assault ended when he was surprisingly confronted by a
male teacher and shoved into an empty classroom. Once locked inside
the room, Steinhauser turned the gun on himself.

Seung-Hui Cho

Location: Blacksburg, Virginia

Date: April 16, 2007
Crime: The deadliest peacetime massacre by a single gunman in
United States history occurred on the campus of Virginia Tech
University. In two separate attacks, over a period of just 3 hours,
Cho gunned down thirty two and wounded twenty three others with a Glock
19 and Walther P22 handgun. The incident ended when the perpetrator
committed suicide.
Biography: Seung-Hui Cho was an English major in his senior year at
Virginia Tech. For years he had been battling a severe anxiety
disorder which was diagnosed while he was in middle school. Cho’s
earlier college career was not without incident as he was accused of
stalking two female students and ultimately declared mentally ill by a
Virginia special justice. In Cho’s junior year, there were an
increasing number of incidents of disturbing behavior which should have
served as a clear warning sign to his escalating mental condition.
The assault began at 7:15 a.m. with the shooting of two students who
resided in the dorm building next to his. After carrying out this
shooting, he went back to his dorm room, changed his clothes, erased
his computer files and removed the hard drive. He then mailed a
package to NBC News from a nearby Post Office. Then, nearly two hours
after the first shooting, he walked to the location he had chosen for
the second set of shootings and opened fire. He was carrying a
backpack filled with chains, a hammer, a knife, two guns and over 400
rounds of ammunition. In the package he mailed to NBC News, he had
placed several digital recordings and an 1800 page manifesto describing
his hatred for the wealthy. He described himself as the savior of the
world’s oppressed and downtrodden. As have many other perpetrators of
these types of assault, Cho ended it by killing himself.

Seung-Hui Cho holds gun to his head . . .

Steven Wright

Location: England

Date: 2006
Crime: Known by several monikers, including ‘Suffolk Strangler’ and
the ‘Ipswich Ripper’, Wright is serving life in prison for the murders
of 5 prostitutes in late 2006. Police have inconclusively linked him
to as many as 22 total murders in the years prior to his arrest in
2006.
Biography: Wright was born on April 24, 1958 as one of four
children in Erpingham, England. Because the father was serving in the
military, the family lived for periods of time in Malta and Singapore.
After his parents split in the 1960′s, Wright lived with his father
who eventually remarried and had two more children with his second
wife. He left school at the age of 16 and joined the Merchant Navy.
In 1979, he married and fathered a child. He bounced around different
jobs and was separated from his wife by 1987. He was accused of
attacking a prostitute in the 1980′s and throughout the 90′s he
incurred huge debt’s due to gambling and heavy drinking. By the year
2000, he had attempted suicide on two different occasions. The five
murders he was convicted of, occurred over a six week period in late
2006. Police conclusively linked DNA samples found on the bodies to
Wright, as well as the victims DNA found on his clothing and in his
vehicle. During the trial, the investigators stated that it was almost
as if Wright made no attempt to conceal his identity. Since his
arrest, police have possibly tied him to several unsolved prostitute
murders as well as to a murder of a co-worker dating back to 1986.

Thomas Quick

Location: Norway & Sweden

Date: 1964 – 1990
Crime: Convicted of armed robbery and sentenced to prison, while in custody, confessed to the rape and murder of 30 men.
Biography: Thomas Quick was born, Sture Ragnar Bergwall, on April
26, 1950 in Falun, Sweden. His case is one that has baffled Swedish
authorities for years because of the controversy surrounding Quick’s
confessions and the complete lack of forensic evidence linking him to
the crimes. At least two of his confessions led to the closing of
murder cases that had been unsolved for 18 years. According to Quick,
his first murder occurred in 1964, where he overpowered and killed a 14
year old boy. Later that year, he claims to have killed again near a
town called, Urshult. This confession has been called into question
because of the distance between Quick’s hometown and Urshult.
According to Quick’s family, he was never outside of Falun during the
time of this murder. While in prison, Quick was tried and convicted of
8 murders, however most of the convictions came about only because of
his confessions and ability to describe some of the details of the
killings that were never released to the public. The bulk of the
killings that Quick confessed to and was convicted for, happened
between 1976 and 1988. However, many authorities have debunked his
confessions, citing the lack of evidence and the fact that in Sweden,
those on trial are given access to all of the information in the police
investigation. This, they claim would give Quick information that he
can use during his confessions. On April 20, 2009 Thomas Quick
recanted his confessions and has requested a new trial. His attorney’s
maintain that Quick is mentally ill and not fit to have confessed to
the murders.

Thomas Watt Hamilton

Location: Dunblane, Scotland

Date: March 13, 1996
Crime: Armed with 2 9mm Browning pistols and 2 .357 Magnum
revolvers, slaughtered sixteen children and one adult before killing
himself. This spree remains the deadliest spree killing of children in
the history of the United Kingdom.
Biography: Thomas Watt Hamilton was a 44-year old, unemployed
shopkeeper and former Scout leader who walked into the Dunblane Primary
School and opened fire. While his motives for this slaughter are
unsubstantiated, authorities had fielded complaints regarding his
suspicious behavior towards boys. In letters, written in the years
prior to the massacre, Hamilton complained that those rumors led to the
failure of his business and contributed to his inability to organize a
local boys’ club.
Police investigators claim that he brought 743 rounds into the school
and fired his weapons 109 times. The final shot occurred in the school
gym when he placed one of the revolvers in his mouth and pulled the
trigger, killing himself instantly.

Tijan Mingjian

Location: Beijing, China

Date: September 20, 1994
Crime: Tian, an officer in the People’s Liberation Army, after
being reprimanded by superiors, grabbed a type 81 assault rifle and
shot dead 5 soldiers, injuring ten more. He then hijacked a jeep and
while heading towards Beijing, began shooting people at random, killing
seventeen and injuring scores more. He was ultimately brought down by a
police sniper.
Biography: Tian Mingjian was a 31-year old, First Lieutenant who
committed one of the most famous violent crimes in modern Chinese
history. The events leading up to the rampage give us a window into
the killer’s motive. Reports indicate that Tian snapped after his
wife, who was pregnant with their second child, died during an abortion
procedure. Apparently, Tian’s superior officer suggested that his
wife have the procedure in keeping with China’s ‘One-child’ policy.
The night before the attack, Tian was involved in a bitter dispute with
a fellow officer, until he was supposedly calmed down by the battalion
commander. The following morning, Tian shot and killed both officers,
gunned down others on the base and then headed into Beijing, firing
rounds along the way. He stopped once he got to Tiananmen Square and
began shooting people in the head until the sniper’s caught up to him
and got a clean shot at him.

Timothy Kretschmer

Location: Winnenden, Germany

Date: March 11, 2009
Crime: A year after graduating from ‘Albertville’ secondary school,
Kretschmer entered the school with a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol
and fired more than 60 rounds killing many students and teachers. He
then fled the school, hijacked a car and ended up in a shootout in
nearby Wendlingen. The result of this killing was 15 dead and 9 injured
before the perpetrator shot himself in the head.
Biography: Timothy Kretschmer was a 17-year old student with poor
grades and anger management issues. Those that knew him described ‘a
lonely and frustrated young man who felt rejected by society’.
Kretschmer had once harbored dreams of becoming a professional table
tennis player, but according to his coach, had a very difficult time
controlling his temper and even more so, accepting defeat. His matches
were marred by temper tantrums and yelling at the opponent. In 2008,
he spent time in a clinic being treated for clinical depression,
however, never continued his treatment on an out-patient basis. Then,
two days prior to the attack, posted to a website that he was ‘gonna
kill some faggots at my old school. Watch the news from Germany.’ No
one who read the thread alerted authorities and in fact, many replied
to his posting with encouraging epithets and goading him into beating
previous death tolls from know school shootings.

Walter Seifert

Location: Cologne, Germany

Date: June 11, 1964
Crime: On the date of his 42nd birthday, took a lance and a
flamethrower into a schoolyard, killing eight students and two
teachers, while injuring twenty-two others.
Biography: Walter Seifert was born on June 11, 1922 and lived a
fairly non-descript life before serving in World War II. Seifert’s
life turned upside down when his wife died in childbirth in 1961. It
was that tragic event that sent his life spiraling into chaos. He was
diagnosed with schizophrenia, and with his tuberculosis flaring up,
began claiming that the German government was cheating him out of his
war pension. On the day of the Cologne school massacre, his 42nd
birthday, Seifert took a homemade flame thrower and a lance into the
schoolyard and began shouting, ‘I am Adolph Hitler the Second!’ He
then viciously killed eight students, began smashing windows in the
school and setting classrooms on fire. He stabbed one of the teachers
who confronted him with his lance. He then left the schoolyard and
ingested a bottle of poisonous insecticide, hoping to kill himself
before the police arrived. Instead, he survived long enough to be
apprehended, but died the next day in custody at the local hospital.

Woo Bum-kon

Location: Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea

Date: April 27, 1982
Crime: Using an M1 Carbine rifle and hand grenades, this Korean
police officer went on a rampage, killing 57 people and wounding 35
others. This incident, the largest known spree killing in modern
history ended when Woo strapped two grenades to his chest and blew
himself up.
Biography: Born on February 24, 1955, Woo Bum-kon was a provincial
police officer in the mountainous region, Gyeongsangnam-do, South
Korea. On the day of the slaughter, Woo was said to have gotten into a
heated argument with his wife, after which he began drinking heavily.
He then went to the police armory which was unattended due to all of
the officers being at a meeting. He left the armory with two carbine
rifles, 180 rounds of ammunition and seven hand grenades and promptly
shot his first victim. He then began wandering through the town
shooting people indiscriminately. According to survivors, over the
course of the next eight hours, Woo was firing his weapon and exploding
grenades while jumping around shouting like a madman. He left victims
dying in the streets in five area villages. In a farmhouse, miles from
his hometown, Woo detonated two grenades, killing himself and three
members of the household he was in at the time.